Confessions on the 7:45(82)

THIRTY-THREE

Cora

“What is it, Mom?” demanded Selena.

Cora clutched the iPad, still staring in disbelief. Her daughter’s face was a mask of confused anger. “This woman on the street with Geneva—” Cora still couldn’t quite believe her eyes.

“Oliver,” said Selena, looking at her son. A tear trailed down his cheek. “Go to bed, sweetie. This is a grown-up conversation.”

“But—” the boy said, staring back and forth between them. “I’m sorry.”

“Now,” said Selena, too sharply. She shut her eyes, as if summoning patience, then softened her voice. “Please, honey. Please.”

Oliver opened, then closed his mouth, finally storming off, the door swinging behind him. Cora heard him stomping on the stairs, had the urge to chase after him, to comfort him. He’d be upset because he was a sensitive child.

Selena took the iPad from Cora’s hands and touched the screen, the glow lighting her face as she watched the video.

After a second she gasped, sank into the seat behind her with a thud. She shook her head, seemed to be puzzling.

“Do you know her?” Selena asked finally.

“Do you?” asked Cora.

“I—met her on the train,” Selena said, sounding a little dazed, incredulous. “She’s been—texting me. I saw her again for a drink in the city.”

The revelation pulsed through Cora. “Oh my god.”

“Who is she? Mom?”

The words jammed up in Cora’s throat. There were so many things that she’d never told her daughters about their father, the things he’d done. She’d kept his secrets, to spare her girls.

Cora reached for Oliver’s iPad again, clicked on the image. Yes, it was her. Cora had immediately recognized the girl in the video.

“Mom!” said Selena. “Who is she?”

The first time Cora laid eyes on her, the girl was young, in her late teens. She was hovering outside the grocery store. Dark, with strong features like Cora’s husband, slim like their daughters—there was something feral about her, something that awakened Cora’s mothering instincts. She saw the girl in produce, inspecting apples. What was it about her, she always wondered, that caught Cora’s eye that afternoon? Then she was by the newspapers.

Cora almost approached her. Do you need help? She wanted to ask, even though there wasn’t any overt indication that anything was wrong. Just a sense she had. But when Cora was finished with checkout, the girl was gone.

The next time, the girl was walking up their block, trying to look like she belonged there. But she wouldn’t belong anywhere, Cora thought. She had the energy of an outsider, eyes searching, shoulders hiked. Her clothes were shabby, but she was leggy and buxom, a bombshell beauty. She kept walking.

Then, a few days later, she was hovering by the oak tree. Cora watched her from the kitchen window, then sauntered out onto the porch to water some plants, wondering if she’d approach the house. Finally, Cora walked down the flagstone path. I’ll invite her in. See what she wants, thought Cora. But the girl scurried off.

Cora knew who she was. The resemblance was so strong.

Marisol was off to college. Selena was a senior, would be leaving for NYU in the fall. It was spring, a time of new beginning, rebirth.

That girl. The girl on the street outside her house. The one on the video now.

She was the final straw for Cora.

Not because she was angry that her husband had clearly fathered another child outside the marriage; that was bad enough. But that he had abandoned that child and now she was so lost, so alone that she hovered on the street, waiting—for what, Cora didn’t yet know. What kind of man was he? How could she have ever loved someone so utterly morally and emotionally bankrupt?

Cora summoned her courage. It was so much easier to talk to her older daughter.

Marisol. Marisol talked—she might cry, or yell—but they talked and talked, worked it out. For Selena, everything was always black-and-white, good or bad—she was like her father that way. Marisol understood the shades of gray that comprised most of life—that sometimes what seemed right was wrong, that what was wrong might feel right. She wasn’t as hard on Cora as Selena had been and still was. Cora knew that Selena thought she was weak for staying with Doug so many years, for keeping his secrets. But she’d done what she knew how to do. She’d endured her own unhappiness because she thought an intact home was best for her children. Or maybe she was just afraid.

And now Selena found herself in the same mess—even worse. As a mother, how could Cora not take some responsibility for that? She’d been a poor role model.

The words, when they came, were little more than a whisper.

“She’s—your father’s daughter by another woman. A child from one of his affairs,” she said.

Selena blanched, mouth opening.

“She’s your half sister,” Cora went on. “Her name is Pearl.”



THIRTY-FOUR

Pearl

The call came late. The ringing of her phone leaked deep into her dream, where she ran down the stairs of an underground turret that bored into the earth. Her footfalls echoed and a shadowy figure was behind her. She could feel its chill breath. Down, down. Deeper, deeper. The sunlight above faded, and the stairway let out into a system of low caves. She felt her way toward the ringing of the phone, a lifeline, a way out. When it finally pulled her from sleep, she saw her phone glowing on her bedside. Jason had an arm and a leg draped over her; he slept like a child, deeply, nearly impossible to wake.